Not so sweet FA

Wigan's Paul Scharner (C) celebrates his team's second goal at Wembley as they head for an FA Cup final showdown with Manchester City. Photograph: Paul Ellis/AFP/Getty Images

Your correspondent (16 April) suggests that the Southwark Ambitions scheme, which has seen UCL and Cambridge University work together to encourage Southwark students to apply to university, has been discontinued following withdrawal of funding. While we are saddened by the withdrawal of government funding and for the wider implications which this decision will have for widening participation, both UCL and Cambridge remain committed to the scheme, and will continue to fund the cohort from existing budgets. The scheme will support the current cohort until they apply to university in 2016-17. UCL and Cambridge are committed to a project that is entirely in keeping with their historic missions to widen opportunity and ensure talented students from all backgrounds are encouraged to go to university.Katy RedfernHead of outreach, University College London

• Jonathan Freedland's description of David Owen and David Steel as "the twin faces of the SDP/Liberal alliance" (Report, 18 April) is wide of the mark considering that, when the merger of the SDP with the Liberal party was proposed, David Owen rejected it outright and continued to lead a smaller SDP.Dudley TurnerWesterham, Kent

• In 1976, I hitchhiked across Canada (Report, 18 April). Days before I left london, I was told by a friend that Pierre Trudeau had asked Canadian drivers to stop for hitchhikers "so that students could see our great country". I never did track down that story, but if it's true it worked. I often refused lifts just to walk and look.Alan FryLondon

• So, the FA says that the 5.15 kick off for the FA Cup final was agreed with "major stakeholders" – except for the fans, of course (Sport, 17 April). Is there, I wonder, another organisation in the UK more contemptuous of its customers?Milton CadmanNorthampton